Good Luck With Trying To Work With BillMeLater

I can't tell you when I signed up for a BillMeLater account.  I know it was long ago, when I was in college, and probably the only reason I signed up for an account was because they were either giving me a discount, or something stupid like a hat (I signed up for a Sears card for a $7 toolbag, and a Home Depot card for a $3 screwdriver set).

I can't even tell you what the hell I've used BillMeLater to buy for over half of my balance.  I do know that they did something tricky a while back and made BillMeLater the default payment option on my eBay account.  That meant that whenever I thought I was paying with my own money in my Paypal account, they were charging it and making interest on it, since I already had a nice balance.  I should have known that if they were going to do something this tricky, they would be horrible to deal with.

The only good thing I can say about BillMeLater is the fact that I don't even think they have my social security number.  They have never shown up on any of my credit reports in the past decade.

I called BillMeLater up after I missed a payment.  The CSR was a total turd nugget.  I explained that I was having some issues, and he replied asking me for a payment.  I would explain to him again that I had no money to pay, and he would again reply asking for a payment.

A month later, I logged into the BillMeLater website and they actually gave me a little quiz of questions to why I was late with my payment.  When I selected "I can't afford any payment" the quiz told me to call a 1800 number.  So I called BillMeLater back, and talked to a somewhat nicer turd nugget CSR.  He actually convinced me to make a partial payment, and then explained to me that as long as I made another payment of something like $30 before my next due date, something magical would happen.

By something magical happening, he meant that my account wouldn't be closed, because he told me that after three missed payments, the accounts are automatically closed and sent to collections. So of course, I agreed to make a payment, and had another one set up on that particular date.  After this was done, I asked the CSR if there was any way I could get my interest reduced or entire some kind of hardship program, but he said no.  He did his job and got me to pay,  I screwed myself.  If there was any chance of entering a hardship program with BillMeLater, I lost it.

A couple months before BillMeLater changed its name to PaypalCredit or whatever, I logged into my account just to see if it had been "closed and sent to collections".  Nothing really changed, except my minimum payment due went from $80 to over $400. When I clicked on make a payment, it brought up a window that told me BillMeLater wanted to help me out, and gave me the generous option of bringing my account back to good standing by making four $235 payments over the next four months.

I actually giggled before I closed the web browser.

I haven't heard anything from PaypalCredit yet, but I'm sure since they are associated with eBay now, things could get relatively ugly pretty quickly.